


Snow Angels

by aces



Category: Farscape
Genre: Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-13
Updated: 2010-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:50:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This was snow. It doesn't fall everywhere on Earth, and it doesn't fall all the time, but it's one of the best damned things about the planet. Right up there with milk, 4x4s, and Hooters' barbeque wings."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow Angels

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during the first season, before Chi joins 'em and after the ep with the Ancients (episode titles? I don't need no stinking episode titles!)

"Snow?" John exclaimed. "Snow! Woo-hoo!" He yelled some more of those gibberish words he used with wearying regularity and ran out of the transport pod, rushing headlong into the white landscape beyond.

D'Argo stuck his head out for one moment, sniffed, and growled "Cold" before ducking back inside.

Aeryn blinked. "We knew it was going to be cold before we came down here," she pointed out to D'Argo, twisting her neck to look back at him as he stomped around the pod, pulling on the cold-weather gear they'd pulled from _Moya_'s stores.

"That doesn't make it any less colder," D'Argo grumbled. "I _hate_ cold. I'm a Luxan."

"Yes," Aeryn said dryly, "I know. I'm going to check up on Crichton."

"Good idea," D'Argo answered. "He was _way_ too excited about this snow-stuff."

"He's Crichton," Aeryn answered, as if that explained everything (which for both of them it, in fact, did), and slipped out of the transport pod.

"Snow," she murmured to herself, pausing to get her bearings and locate their other crew member. She had to squint against the sunlight, reflected off the white substance that covered the ground, the trees, everything. Zhaan was in need of something or other which apparently was located in the bark of some of these trees but couldn't leave _Moya_, as that was who she needed the bark for. So down had the others come, and hopefully the trip wouldn't take too long because while Aeryn was a Sebacean even she was finding the chill in the air a bit much.

Crichton was still yelling, and by now Aeryn had come to recognize these particular whoops and squawks as happy, not anger or pain. She could make him out as a large dark speck in the middle of a small white plain surrounded by trees—hopefully the trees they needed—entirely covered from head to foot. He was doing…something. With the snow. Building something, apparently.

Aeryn sighed and marched after him. "Strange man," she muttered for what had to have been the thousandth time since she had met him. Tiny white flakes of presumably the same white stuff were falling by the thousands from the sky, making it easy to track wind direction but difficult to keep her eyes open against them. She opened her mouth to taste, as she'd done the rain on that fake-Earth, and was surprised when it melted in her mouth into water.

"What is this snow?" she called to John as she approached, and he glanced up at her from whatever he was doing. "And why aren't you getting some of that bark for Zhaan?"

"It's snow!" John crowed again, as if that explained everything, and he hadn't been this animated about anything in a while. "Haven't you ever seen snow before, Aeryn?"

"No, of course not," Aeryn responded and stopped in front of him, watching his hands as they shaped and shifted the white stuff, compacting it, building it up into spherical objects. "Until I joined all of _you_, I was rarely planetside."

"Snow," John said, intent upon his work, "snow, Aeryn, snow! It's condensed water, hardened into a solid by the cold of the air. You remember rain, right?" She nodded, though he didn't look up. "It's just like that."

"And what are you doing with this snow?" Aeryn asked blankly, staring down at the thing forming under Crichton's gloved hands. "Is this some strange Erp custom?"

"Earth," the human said patiently, and Aeryn allowed herself a tiny smile because he wasn't looking anyway. It was strange that she wanted to tease him, but she'd given up on trying to analyze the urge or stop herself from doing it. "And yes, it is one of our strange customs. Kids do it all the time in winter."

"Kids," Aeryn repeated, and couldn't keep the amusement from coloring her tone this time. "Of course. I'm not surprised."

John glanced up at her, realizing at last that she was laughing at his expense again, and gave her a sardonic, knowing grin. "Yes, kids," he said. "Didn't you know I'm in the middle of my second childhood?" And he went right back to forming his spheres.

Aeryn sighed and glanced over at the trees, then back at the pod. D'Argo was tramping toward the closest strand of growth, obviously cursing under his breath. She turned back to Crichton and knelt down next to him, knowing that the only way to get him away from this planet more quickly would be to help him. "Alright," she said, "what are you trying to do?"

"Building a snowman, of course," John said as if it were the most reasonable thing in all the universe.

"A 'snow-man'?" She stared down at the spheres blankly. "John, these look nothing like men, human or Sebacean. Or do you actually have more than one sentient species living on your planet?"

"No, no, no," John answered, "it's not supposed to look like a _real_ man. You build the snow up into three balls, see, of three different sizes, and stack them one on top of the other." He looked up at her again, still grinning, and added, "For the crowning effect, you really should have a carrot for a nose, but we'll just have to do without."

"A carrot?" Aeryn answered. "No, never mind, just tell me what to do."

"Build up the snow, pack it together," John answered. "Like what I'm doing, see? That way it holds, so you can make things with it."

"Like this," the Sebacean said, cautiously patting the snow down. The cold transmitted through her gloves, began to seep into her fingers. "Frell, Crichton, my hands are going to go numb!"

"That's the point!" John retorted. "Well, one of the points." He began to sing under his breath, and Aeryn repressed a groan. "In the meadow we can build a snowman," he sang, "and pretend that he is Parson Brown. He'll say are you married, we'll say no man, but you can do the job when you're in town…"

He trailed off, and they worked in silence for half an arn, Aeryn pausing to watch Crichton on occasion to make sure she was still doing it right. Finally she helped John lift up the second, medium-sized ball and plant it on top of the largest, and then John put the smallest one on top.

"Aeryn, Crichton!" D'Argo's voice barked over the comms. "I'm back at the pod with the plant Zhaan needed. Are you two done playing yet?"

"No," John answered before Aeryn could even open her mouth. "You just get warm in the pod while you wait, D'Argo, we'll be with you soon."

"Hurry up then," D'Argo said, and Aeryn swore she heard a muttered oath before the transmission cut out. She bit back another smile. Luxans _really_ hated the cold.

John was running over to the trees, his boots leaving deep tracks in the snow. Aeryn frowned; this planet was according to their scans uninhabited but tracks like that would be far too easy to follow. It didn't matter, though; they'd be off the planet soon, back on _Moya_ and starbursting away from here.

"Woo!" John yelled, rousing her from her thoughts, and he came tearing back with a few spindly sticks in his hands. Aeryn frowned.

"Are those like—carrots?" she asked, nodding at the sticks.

Crichton paused, looked at her, smiled crookedly, and said, "Not exactly, but they'll do." He stuck a couple of fairly equal length on each side of the middle ball, and a far shorter one in the center of the smallest sphere on top. And then he took out of one of his pockets a couple rocks and stuck them in the smallest sphere, above and to each side of the stick. The spheres were all a bit lopsided, not truly smooth and spherical, and it wasn't a very big structure, but John at least seemed quite proud of it.

"See?" he asked. "A snowman!"

She looked it over thoughtfully. "I do see," she said. "Those are its arms, that's its nose, and those are its eyes?" He nodded, still grinning like a fool, and she didn't think she'd ever seen him this cheerful before. "It still needs something," she said and stepped up to it. She pushed her thumb into the top sphere, below the stick, and smeared it across. She stepped back to admire her handiwork.

"That's the idea," John enthused. "Glad to see you made him smilin', too."

Aeryn shook her head, glancing over at the human. "You really are a strange man," she told him in a blend of mystification and amusement. Earlier, when she had first met him, the blend had usually been mystification and exasperation, but he was too endearing for that exasperation to last long.

Not that she would ever let him know that, of course.

"No weirder than the rest of you guys," he retorted, and took her hand. She frowned at him. "John, what are you—John!" she squawked, when he threw them both backwards, toppling them to the ground.

"Crichton, what the _frell_ do you think you are doing—" she started through gritted teeth, and began to pull herself upright.

"No, no, this is another strange Earth tradition," John said, and kept a grip on her hand so that she couldn't get to her feet. He was still lying on the ground, the hood of his cloak protecting the back of his head from being totally covered in snow. "We have to make snow angels."

"Snow angels," Aeryn repeated dubiously.

"Yeah, snow angels." He let go of her and started spread-eagling his arms and legs, pressing into the snow, moving his limbs back and forth regularly. He stood up carefully after that, hopping out of the impression his body had made, and gestured grandly down at it. "That's a snow angel. See, those are its wings, and that's the white robe it's supposed to be wearing."

Aeryn, still seated on the ground, looked over at his snow angel. "I'll take your word for it," she said.

"Now you try," John answered. "Go on, just one, then we can go back to the pod."

She quirked her eyebrows up at him. "Is that a promise?" she asked dryly.

"Cross my heart," he said, doing just that with his hand, and Aeryn shook her head again. _Very strange man_, she thought, but complied because she knew he was stubborn too. She could feel her body pressing into the snow, down, down, and closed her eyes. It was a pleasant sinking sensation, strange, as gravity took her in and steadied her, as the ground cushioned and embraced her in a way the floor of a Prowler or Command Carrier never could. _Is this what coming from a planet feels like?_ she wondered to herself, and let her arms and legs stop moving for a microt while she rested, breathed.

_Foolish nonsense_, some part of her brain lectured coldly, and she sat up, allowing Crichton to help her jump out of her impression without marring it. They both stared down at their angels for a microt, twins whose wings just brushed against each other, and inexplicably Aeryn found herself smiling.

"John! Aeryn! Are you _done_ yet?"

John sighed, and they looked at each other simultaneously. "Yeah, D'Argo," John said to the air, "we're done. We'll be coming right back to the transport. Crichton out."

By silent agreement, they traipsed around their snow angels to get back to the pod. _Let trackers come_, Aeryn decided as they walked away from the snowman. _They won't know what to make of any of it in any case._

"So this was snow," she said, and glanced sideways at her companion.

He glanced back at her, and bit back a smile before facing front again. "Yup," John said laconically. "This was snow. It doesn't fall everywhere on Earth, and it doesn't fall all the time, but it's one of the best damned things about the planet. Right up there with milk, 4x4s, and Hooters' barbeque wings."

Aeryn blinked. "Tell me the translator microbes mistranslated that," she said. John laughed but refused to answer, and they trekked the rest of the short way back to the pod in silence.

Just before she followed Crichton inside, she opened her mouth one last time to catch a few more snowflakes on her tongue.


End file.
